How To Customize Windows Phone Home Screen Live Tiles With Themes For WP7 [Video Tutorial]

Yesterday, we talked about Bazaar – an alternate apps/tweaks distribution platform for Windows Phone 7 (dubbed as the Cydia of WP7) – and today, we will be talking about Themes - a theming platform for Windows Phone 7 (which we would like to dub as the WinterBoard of WP7). Details after the jump!

UI customization on Windows Phone 7 is, as any smartphone enthusiast would know, very limited. Besides changing the lockscreen wallpaper and changing the color of tiles, there isn’t a whole lot you can do to customize the look for your Windows Phone 7 device. Starting today, however, users will be able to customize any tile, use a background image for tiles as well as import/export themes (so that enthusiasts can try out each other’s setups) to give their device a unique look. This certainly isn’t as comprehensive as WinterBoard for iOS, but it’s getting there.

From Windows Phone Hacker:

This early release (of Themes) comes with all the goodies we’ve demoed, and without further ado, here’s the juicy bits:

Features:

Customize any tile (system or third party, including Marketplace)

Use your image as a background for the tiles

Use an accent color for overlay transparency

Import themes

Export themes

A bundle of joy with easy personalization

There is one important pre-requisite, of course: you will need to have a developer-unlocked device. You can unlock Windows Phone 7 using ChevronWP7 for just $9 which allows you to sideload apps like Themes.

The installation procedure itself is rather simple. You can check out the official tutorial from Windows Phone Hacker below:

Windows Phone 7 was initially a very limited mobile operating system, but with the release of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango and exciting workarounds/apps/tweaks like today’s Themes, we really think it is fast-becoming a pretty viable alternative to Android/iOS, especially for power users.

Once you try it out, be sure to let us know what you think of it in the comments section over on our Facebook page.